no bigger ships than battleships

[chassepatrick]

We've got some real experts in space combat here...

If you added more ships wouldn't it just make the game more complicated... at the moment it's Corvette<Destroyer<Cruiser<Battleships... then Battleships<lots of destroyers/corvettes and so on. If you start adding base ship designs you just make it more complicated without actually adding anything to the game.

Basically what we have are Hull sizes. Tiny, small, medium, large (, massive if you're a Military government). What does adding more sizes actually add the game? Out of the sizes we have already you can make (compared to WWI/WWII/modern naval classes) corvettes, destroyers, cruisers, battle-cruisers, battleships, dreadnoughts, carriers, light carriers, frigates, aircraft cruisers/light carriers, torpedo (space)boats, monitors/ironclads (depends if small craft can carry large weapons), pocket battleships (again depends on the compositions).

Also it is the developers idea of what space combat will be like. Atmospheres and weapons etc. they're not going to go make a space game that has space combat that is completely different to the majority of major space movies/shows/games... Imagine trying to make a star wars mod without having manned spaceships....

 

[Surimi]

Remote controlling something is out of the question due to potential signal jamming(No, drones in middle east are not an example - they are using them against a third world "rebellion") so you have to use an AI but if the AI malfunctions and hits say a colony instead the backlash in the western culture will be immense, that being said, all factors could cause the AI to be rouge etc

Right.. but again, all an organic crewmember is going to be able to do is to press the button which lets the AI start firing, and even then their reaction time may already have got everyone killed. They simply cannot process information or do maths fast enough to have any realistic chance of hitting anything or evading fire. And yes, there is a chance that one of the tiny missile-bullets hits a planet (although they could be made small and light enough to burn up in a typical atmosphere while still retaining enough kinetic energy to thoroughly wreck anything in space) but that chance exists whether a living crew is present or not. The crew cannot even see the target, even if you gave them windows (which you wouldn't want to) they aren't going to be able to Luke Skywalker it. All they're going to be able to do is turn on the AI and let it do its thing.

And again, by AI I mean a very simple machine of the kind we have today, not a general intelligence capable of independent thought or reasoning.

In addition Crew are very flexible in terms of repair and solving stuff.

Frankly, the crew are the most fragile thing on the spacecraft. Just about anything in that environment can kill them. Indeed, it's likely that if the ship is hit at all it will be taken out of commission completely, but it doesn't matter because hitting things in space when they are constantly changing speed is really hard.

Again, I'm talking realism. In fiction, I'm all for human crew on warships. Heck, we can even devise some technological solutions for why it might not be a total hazard to have them there. But it doesn't change the fact that we're generally doing there is basing our idea of space warfare on other kinds of warfare, like naval warfare or combat between atmospheric aircraft, when actually they do not resemble each other at all.

 

[Destiny's Player]

 

[Oscot]

In fairness to @Surimi I do accept his point about fleshbags being a comlete fucking liability in space combat. My desire to include them stems exclusively from my paranoia about leaving an intelligent machine unsupervised near big guns, rather than from any belief that "The power of heart" might help you win battles (as opposed a heart getting all its ventricles collapsed under acceleration and then being evaporated to hot carbon by a glancing hit from a fusion laser).

In Europe Universalis most countries had all ship classes at the beginning and evven the land canons were available pretty early. Still i wouldnt call it a casual game. A good space casual game i really like for breaks is Faster then Light

In Faster Than Light it still takes you more than 10 hours to get all the ship classes.
'Nuff Said.

 

[ImperiusArch]

There were more than 4(5) ships in Faster Than Light.

 

[Cannes]

wtf is this? He creates a quasar by shooting at a massive star? That makes absolutely no sense.

 

[ImperiusArch]

It's Star Ruler, having a ship larger than multiple star systems makes no sense.

 

[Asiak]

The Galactica was carrier sized but not titan sized. Certainly not nearly as large as a super star destroyer.

 

[BestOfTheWest]

I'd like to see some auxiliary ship types, like i.e.
- a mobile spaceport that can repair smaller ships even while moving
- a ship that give i.e. an organistion bonus
- a ship that disturbs enemy scanners

When it comes to battle animation, it somewhat bothers me that all ships charge onto / into each other as it was more or less common until the 20th century...

 

[barny]

As much as I'd love to crank out Titans and the like...

View attachment 172190 View attachment 172191

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Makes you wonder, if military dictators have to compensate for something...

 

[KingRolan]

Makes you wonder, if military dictators have to compensate for something...

Of course not, we all know the Grand Marshal is a fine individual and never needs to compensate for anything! Please don't shoot me...

 

[MasterOfGrey]

Yap, that's going in my signature.

Seconded.

 

[MasterOfGrey]

I'd like to see some auxiliary ship types, like i.e.
- a mobile spaceport that can repair smaller ships even while moving
- a ship that give i.e. an organistion bonus
- a ship that disturbs enemy scanners

When it comes to battle animation, it somewhat bothers me that all ships charge onto / into each other as it was more or less common until the 20th century...

I believe the tactical computers were meant to be the solution to this particular problem, however I don't think many had been researched by Wiz yet, certainly they hadn't really been implemented. (Though I seem to recall him possibly changing one on one design near the end of the most recent stream.)

I suspect the tactical computers make all the difference, especially when the combat AI really gets its feet under it since it's still being developed. The most recent Stream having only the first real strategic combat AI programmed in.

 

[REDDQ]

Ah... Star Ruler... the game in which no fucks were given.

 

[Destiny's Player]

Ah... Star Ruler... the game in which no fucks were given.

Still, all agree the sequel is better.

 

[Surimi]

Speaking on topic for a moment instead of rambling about "realistic" space war..

In real life naval warfare, battleships were the largest fighting ships it was ever practical to build and even then, you could argue that they were never really practical even at the high point of battleship design because, while effective, they were extremely expensive and vulnerable to much, much cheaper weapons like torpedoes and aircraft. In this sense, Stellaris' battleships seem to match up to their naval counterparts.. very powerful on paper, but vulnerable to swarms of cheap corvettes, as we saw. In this sense, do we need bigger ships? Not really. What role would they perform which wouldn't just be an even more extreme version of what battleships do?

That said, I like the idea of giving players the option of building ships which totally aren't practical, as some kind of absurd vanity project which will never, never be worth the cost but which will give a massively wealthy space empire something to sink it's enormous resources into. Like, there was a point in EVE Online where Titans were openly referred to as "Space Penises" (not just by the players either) because they were these huge, utterly impractical wastes of resources which were virtually useless outside of the largest fleet battles. There was no practical reason to want to own one, but people wanted it anyway because.. well.. see the nickname.

So yeah, having an absurdly oversized late game ship class which will make you feel incredibly awesome to deploy in battle then make you feel incredibly sad when they get destroyed by swarms of cheap corvettes because they're totally ludicrous sounds pretty fun to me.

 

[GrafKeks]

... No, it's... well, it's just that it's already confirmed. I dunno, some ships in Stellaris do look kinda phallic xD

How would you show enormous power, intelligence, strength and the overcoming of extreme adversity other than a phallus.

 

[208]

How would you show enormous power, intelligence, strength and the overcoming of extreme adversity other than a phallus.

 

[REDDQ]

Still, all agree the sequel is better.

No idea, I didn't play it yet. I liked what I see on YT so I am gonna try some day. Imho Star Ruler, besides Distant Worlds Universe and, soon, Stellaris, is a rare example of a game that actually tried to introduce new things to 4X genre.

Especially space combat seems very nice in SR2.

 

[barny]

In this sense, Stellaris' battleships seem to match up to their naval counterparts.. very powerful on paper, but vulnerable to swarms of cheap corvettes, as we saw. In this sense, do we need bigger ships?

I don't think that this would actually be intended. If corvettes will really be able, to just swarm battleships so much, that battleships and even cruisers won't have a chance, then they have to change the balancing. Keeping smaller ships important in the later stages of the game is nice and well, but don't make them TOO powerful.